The most ancient Toledan sword-maker known is a Moor called Del Rey, because Ferdinand the Catholic stood as godfather at his conversion. His mark was a perrillo, or little dog, which was so famous that Don Quixote speaks of it. But the swords of Spain were in general renowned all over Europe in the middle ages. Froissart speaks of the short Spanish dagger with a wide blade. We know by
Shakspere how much this weapon was prized in England. It was a trusty Toledo blade Othello kept in his chamber.
The great blow to the sword manufactory of Toledo was the introduction of French costumes in the seventeenth century, in which swords were dispensed with. Carlos III. resolved to revive this industry, and erected the present fabric on the right shore of the Tagus, more than a mile from the city. The swords are inferior in quality and lack their former elegance of form. They participate in the degeneracy of those who wield them. Spain, once noble, chivalrous, and of deep convictions, has lost its fine temper and keenness of thrust. The raw material out of which such wonders were wrought in the old days remains still, however, in the people as in the country. It only needs a return to old principles of faith and honor on the part of the ruling classes to prepare the way for a new Spanish history, more glorious and more advantageous to the world at large than even Spain has ever known.
[190] It was M. Hérouard, a French refugee, employed at the military academy at Toledo as professor of French, who, hunting one day, in 1858, among the hills of Guarrazar, found a fragment of a gold chain that was glittering in the sun, and, digging, discovered the crowns that have been so much admired at Paris, and which are even more valuable for their historic interest than for the gold and precious stones. Later researches have brought others to light, but smaller in size, that are now in the Armeria at Madrid.
ENGLISH RULE IN IRELAND.
No one can pass from England into Ireland without being struck by the contrast in the condition of the two countries—a contrast so marked and absolute that it is revealed at the first glance, and in lines so bold and rigid that it seems to have been produced by nature itself. In England there is wealth, thrift, prosperity; in Ireland, poverty, helplessness, decay. Into the great heart of London, through arteries that stretch round the globe, the riches of the whole earth are poured. Dublin is a city of the past, and, in spite of its imposing structures, impresses us sadly. The English cities are busy marts of commerce or homes of comfort, luxury, and learning. The Irish towns are empty, silent, decayed. Into England’s ports come the ships of all the nations; but in Ireland’s hardly a sail is unfurled. There the chimneys of innumerable factories shut out with their black smoke the light of heaven; here the Round Tower or the crumbling ruin stands as a monument of death. England is over-crowded; in Ireland we travel for miles without meeting a human being; pass through whole counties from which the people have disappeared to make room for cattle. Freedom is in the very air of England: the people go about their business or pleasure in a sturdy, downright way, and in a conscious security under the protection of wise laws; in Ireland we cannot take a step without being offended by evidences of oppression and misrule. The people are disarmed and unprotected, guarded by a foreign soldiery, the servants of an alien aristocracy.
To what causes must we ascribe this wide difference in the condition of two islands, separated by a narrow strip of sea, with but slight dissimilarity of climate, and governed ostensibly for now nearly seven hundred years by the same laws?
The explanation given universally
by English writers, with the tone with which one is accustomed to affirm axiomatic truths, is based upon the dissimilarity of the two peoples in natural character and in religious faith. The Irish, they say, are by nature discontented, idle, and thriftless, and their religion is in fatal opposition to liberty and progress. The subject is worthy of our attention. Ireland is an anomaly in European history. Just at the time when the other Christian nations, after overcoming the divisions and feuds of a barbarous age, were settling down into the unity which renders harmonious development possible, the seed of perpetual discord and never-ending strife was planted ineradicably in her soil. Three hundred years of almost incessant warfare with the Dane had left her exhausted and divided, an easy prey to the Norman barons, who introduced into her national life a foreign blood and an alien civilization.